The Herati Pattern: One Design Across Persian Rugs

Look closely at the field of a Bijar, a Hamadan village rug or a fine Moud from eastern Iran and you will often find the same small arrangement repeated hundreds of times: a flower at the centre, a diamond-shaped frame around it, and curved leaves sweeping past its corners. This is the Herati pattern, one of the most widely woven designs in Persian rugs. It is so common that it is easy to stop seeing it.

Yet the Herati is not one fixed design. Each weaving region has drawn it in its own way, stretching the leaves, breaking the curves into steps, enlarging the flower or crowding the units together. Once you know what to compare, a Herati field can tell you a good deal about where and how a rug was made.

What the pattern is

In Persian the design is most often called mahi dar ham, which can be translated as "fish intermingled", or simply mahi, "fish". Western dealers and writers adopted the name Herati, after the city of Herat, and also called it the fish pattern or the Feraghan design, because it appeared in so many Feraghan rugs.

At its simplest, the unit is a large flower held between two curved, pointed leaves that face each other. These leaves are the "fish". In many versions they are stylized beyond any resemblance to fish, but early twentieth-century observers noted that some weavers drew them with something like eyes and fins.

The fuller version, and the one most people picture, adds a lozenge. A diamond-shaped frame surrounds a central rosette, smaller flowers sit at or near its corners, and four curved leaves lie diagonally around it. Repeated edge to edge, these units interlock into a continuous lattice in which it becomes hard to say where one unit ends and the next begins.

Persian rug scholarship does not entirely agree on which elements are essential. Some definitions treat the lozenge with four leaves as the core structure. Others argue that the pattern is fundamentally two leaves and one flower, with the lozenge as a later or regional addition. The disagreement matters, because an eastern form of the pattern has been described without a lozenge at all.

The design is also flexible about its parts. Weavers have replaced the leaves with boteh forms, clusters of small flowers or curving branches, while keeping the overall rhythm. Persian names record some of these variations: golddar herati for a flowered version, herati shekasteh for a broken, angular one, rizeh mahi for a very small repeat, and morgh-o-mahi, "bird and fish", for a version with bird-like elements.

Where it came from

The name seems to answer the question of origin, but it may not. George Griffin Lewis, in a rug guide first published in 1911, stated plainly that the pattern "originated in the old city of Herat". Walter Hawley, writing in 1913, was more careful, describing the Herati as "of uncertain antiquity and origin". Modern Persian scholarship sides with caution. A name given in the market tells us where buyers associated a design, not necessarily where it was first drawn.

Still, Herat is a reasonable place to start. Under the Timurids in the fifteenth century it was one of the great artistic centres of the Persian-speaking world, and it remained part of the province of Khorasan into the Safavid period. The pattern appears to have emerged in the late Timurid and early Safavid periods and became especially common in carpets. By the later Safavid period it was one of the most widely used field designs in Iran, and it travelled well beyond, into weaving in the Caucasus, Anatolia and India.

Large carpets like this one show palmettes and long lancet-shaped leaves spread across the field on a grand scale. Hawley made a related observation about the silk court carpets of the Shah Abbas period. In their fields, a diamond-shaped figure linking four palmettes struck him as "suggestive of the Herati or fish pattern", and probably its prototype. The idea that the Herati is a compressed, repeatable version of this courtly vocabulary is attractive, though it is an interpretation of resemblance, not a documented line of descent.

One study of regional Persian rugs records that the mahi design first flourished in Birjand, in southern Khorasan, before spreading to other weaving centres. The British carpet authority A. Cecil Edwards distinguished two forms: a north-western one built around a lozenge with four fish-like leaves, and a Khorasan form without the lozenge. Taken together, these accounts make an eastern origin with a westward spread plausible, but not proven.

The pattern has also attracted symbolic readings. Some Iranian writers connect the paired fish and the central lotus with ancient ideas about water, fertility and renewal, including imagery from the cult of Mithra. These readings are part of how the design has been interpreted, but there is little direct evidence that weavers understood the motif in those terms. The more secure history is visual: a flexible unit that weavers in very different places found worth repeating.

One unit, many layouts

The Herati can fill a rug in several ways. In an allover layout, the repeat covers the whole field without a central medallion, so the rug reads as a continuous surface. In a medallion layout, the Herati fills the field around a central medallion and sometimes the medallion itself. In a corner-and-medallion layout, it fills the remaining ground between a medallion and four corner pieces.

The size of the repeat changes the effect dramatically. A large repeat, with each unit the size of a hand, reads as a bold pattern. A very small repeat, as in the finest Moud and Senneh pieces, merges at a distance into an even texture that only resolves into flowers and leaves up close. This is one reason Herati rugs work in so many rooms: from across the room they behave almost like a solid colour, while rewarding a closer look.

Five things to compare

A Persian study of the pattern across Iranian weaving regions compared its versions along five simple axes. They are useful for anyone looking at a Herati rug today, because each one can be judged by eye without turning the rug over or counting knots.

• Leaf shape. Are the leaves short and plump, or long and stretched?
• Curvature. Are they strongly curved, only half curved, or nearly straight?
• Drawing. Are the outlines smooth and curvilinear, or broken into steps and angles?
• Leaf size. Are the leaves small, medium or large in relation to the rest of the field?
• Placement. Do the leaves sit diagonally around the central flower, creating a sense of rotation, or are they set vertically or horizontally?

Diagonal placement is by far the most common, and it gives many Herati fields their characteristic sense of turning movement around each flower. Where the leaves are set upright or side by side, the rotation weakens and the field reads more as rows or columns.

The study coded one illustrated example of each regional version on these five axes. The table below summarizes that coding. It is best read as a guide to tendencies rather than a set of rules: one rug cannot stand for every rug from a region, and in a few cases the study's own written descriptions are broader than the single coded example.

A few patterns stand out. Smooth, curvilinear drawing with short leaves clusters in the town traditions of Tabriz, Khoy, Farahan, Sarouk and Hamadan. Broken, stepped drawing dominates in Kurdistan, the Hamadan villages, Lorestan and the tribal versions. Large leaves are almost entirely a feature of village and tribal weaving, and the only examples that abandon diagonal placement altogether, Alamdar, Ashterinan and the Baluch version, all come from outside the town workshops.

A regional tour

Azerbaijan: Tabriz, Khoy, Ardabil and Sarab

In Tabriz, the Herati is usually the lozenge form, used in both allover and corner-and-medallion layouts. The field is covered completely, the drawing is simplified rather than minutely detailed, and the leaves sit diagonally in a square repeat so that each unit seems to turn around its flower. Tabriz weavers also used a very small version, rizeh mahi, in which the leaves shrink and the rotation becomes a fine ripple across the field.

Khoy versions are close to Tabriz but smaller, more abstract and less detailed. Small rosettes sit beside the leaves and lozenges, and because they line up in rows, the field acquires a faint grid that reads almost like brickwork.

Around Ardabil the design appears in town, village and tribal weaving, always with a lozenge. Town and village rugs keep the leaves diagonal, while some tribal pieces set them upright. In the tribal versions the leaves are spaced farther apart, drawn larger and with stepped, half-curved outlines, and the small flower sits behind each leaf rather than between them. The study records several local variants from the Ardabil area, including Salmanabad and Pirmadar types, which range from broken to curvilinear drawing.

Sarab, where the local version is called mashayekhi, sits between these traditions. Its Herati blends town and village drawing, mixing curved and stepped outlines, and is valued for a careful balance of colour. It usually appears in corner-and-medallion layouts, sometimes with several fields of different ground colours.

Central Iran: Farahan, Sarouk and Lilian

Farahan rugs gave the design one of its Western names, and the Herati is among the region's principal designs. Here the leaves are small, sharply pointed and only briefly curved, set diagonally or vertically around a central flower that is linked to them by fine lines, which gives the unit a gentle sense of rotation. The repeat is small and upright-rectangular, and it fills corner-and-medallion, medallion and allover layouts alike. Local variants include a fuller mahi dar ham, a zanburi version and the morgh-o-mahi, "bird and fish". The zanburi and bird-and-fish examples in the study are strikingly different from the classic Farahan unit: long, straight and broken, with large leaves.

Sarouk versions are fine, dense and crowded, with small curved leaves and a geometric lotus at the centre. Because the units are so close together, a Sarouk Herati field can read as an even texture rather than a pattern of separate units.

Lilian, a group of Armenian villages south of Arak, wove single-wefted rugs. Its Herati appears inside a toothed, seven-sided medallion and is drawn in a tribal manner: simplified, with the leaves as the dominant element and with small geometric details inside the lozenge flowers that recall Qashqai weaving.

Kurdistan: Senneh and Bijar

Senneh rugs carry one of the best-known Herati fields. It was woven in both coarse and very fine versions: the coarse version is called sag mahi and the fine one zanburi. Over time the unit shrank and became one of the hallmarks of Senneh weaving. It is drawn in a highly abstract way, with the leaves set diagonally and sometimes almost horizontally. Because the units are so small, a Senneh field contains a great many lozenges.

Bijar versions are close to Senneh but sturdier and bolder, with fewer, larger units across the field. They appear in town, village and tribal weaving, with and without a lozenge. The best-known type is called halvaei. Its repeat is relatively large, and its toothed leaves recall Qashqai drawing. Besides a large round flower at the centre, two small flowers sit between the leaves and connect to the centre. The Afshar weavers north of Bijar, near Takab, produced a version with small, plump leaves, often in corner-and-medallion and medallion layouts, and some of the finest Bijar Herati rugs are attributed to them. Our guide to Bijar rugs explains the weave that gives these pieces their weight.

Hamadan and its villages

The Hamadan region shows the widest range of all, which suits a region of many villages each with its own habits, as described in our Hamadan rug guide. In Hamadan itself the Herati is woven in town and village styles. Village versions simplify the unit, usually keep the lozenge, and space the leaves so that the field takes on an oval rhythm.

Hosseinabad lies south-west of Hamadan on the road toward Tuyserkan, where the Herati is the most common design after two other local patterns. Its leaves are drawn with straight, stepped lines and lean against the central flower, while star-shaped flowers, eight-pointed rosettes and lozenge-shaped flowers fill the spaces between. The square repeat appears in corner-and-medallion, medallion and allover layouts.

Malayer versions are described as coarser and more angular than Hamadan's, with stretched leaves whose bodies and tails carry large teeth. The example coded in the study is curvilinear, however, which is a useful reminder that a region's reputation and an individual rug do not always match. Malayer tribal pieces are often very small, and their lozenges are sometimes woven only as halves at the top and bottom of the field. Our Malayer rug guide covers the region's weaving more broadly.

Around Malayer, several villages have their own versions. Jowkar's is tribal in style, with small leaves fixed to the central flower and square flowers set along the diagonals of the repeat. Tayemeh, south of Malayer toward Arak, wove finer double-wefted rugs from drawn designs, and its Herati, known locally as panjeh mahi, shows a town influence in its rounded, turning leaves. Musa-khan Bolaghi, north of Malayer, wove a tribal version in which a clear central flower is surrounded by four leaves, two of them smaller than the others.

In Alamdar, between Malayer and Borujerd, the design becomes fully geometric. Lozenges stack in continuous vertical columns, the leaves are reduced to angular L-shaped forms, and the rugs are single-wefted. The study notes that this version is not found anywhere else.

Lorestan: Ashterinan

In the Ashterinan area of Lorestan, a tribal version known as taj o mahi, "crown and fish", drops both the lozenge and the corner-and-medallion layout. Small crown-like palmettes sit inside six-sided frames, with eight-pointed flowers between them. The leaves are large, stretched and toothed, set far apart and growing from above and below a small central flower. The result is an elongated, oval unit with little sense of rotation.

Eastern Iran: Birjand, Moud and the Baluch

In Birjand and the villages around Moud, the Herati is a principal local design, usually woven as rizeh mahi and known locally as mahi Moud. It is made in town and village versions, in allover, corner-and-medallion and medallion layouts, sometimes with a sun-like central medallion. The repeat is small and square, the leaves are set diagonally or nearly upright, and the units turn tightly around their flowers. At its finest the result can look almost like embroidery.

Among Baluch weavers, the best-known Herati is the Salar-khani type, named after a tribal group. It is a secondary design for them, less common than tree designs, and it follows Baluch drawing habits: broken outlines, a lozenge with stepped or ram's-horn edges, and leaves that sometimes sit side by side or even at the edges of the unit, so that the rotation nearly disappears. Another Baluch example in the study sets its large leaves horizontally.

Fars: the Qashqai

Qashqai weavers drew the Herati with a lozenge, in corner-and-medallion, medallion and vase layouts. The leaves are large and toothed, drawn in fully broken lines, and stretched to an exaggerated length. Their tails join the central flower, and their heads connect to the geometric bird-head forms typical of Qashqai rugs. A small half-flower sits on each leaf's back, and geometric, animal and plant motifs fill the spaces around it.

City, village and tribe

Across all these regions, one broad pattern holds. Town workshops, often working from drawn designs, tend to produce Herati fields that are orderly, symmetrical, finely detailed and small in scale. Village and tribal weavers, often working from memory or from a sample, produce larger, coarser and more freely drawn units, with less regular spacing and less sense of rotation.

Neither approach is better. A finely drawn Sarouk or Moud field has a jewel-like precision. A Hosseinabad or Qashqai field has the energy of a design that has been reinterpreted rather than copied. Both are recognizably the same pattern, which is the remarkable thing about the Herati: few designs have adapted to so many hands without losing their identity.

When you look at a Herati rug, start with the five questions above, then step back and see how the repeat behaves at a distance. The Herati rugs in our collection include versions from several of the regions described here, which makes them easy to compare side by side.

Sources and image credits

• Leila Nafisi-nia and Mohammad-Taghi Ashouri. The Herati (Mahi dar Ham) Pattern in the Geography of Iranian Carpets. Goljaam, 2013.
• A. Cecil Edwards. The Persian Carpet. 1953.
• Walter A. Hawley. Oriental Rugs, Antique and Modern. 1913.
• G. Griffin Lewis. The Practical Book of Oriental Rugs. 1911, revised 1913.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Carpet, Iran, Herat, 16th century. 1962.263.
• BerndtF. Fine rug from Bidjar, Iran. Photograph, CC BY-SA 3.0.